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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: Sondor "Soundhouse"
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-23-2011 10:45 PM
quote: Sam D. Chavez
Bobby, you're dreaming here.
Yes, I agree. But it's kind of fun. Hypothetically speaking it should be possible to create a penthouse mounted film reader that can see data for SRD, DTS and SDDS as well as dead formats like CDS or LC Digital and perhaps even digitally read the optical analog tracks too.
Regular movie theaters have had no need for this sort of thing because most did indeed only install one of the digital sound formats. It was rare to find a screen that had two or three digital sound formats installed.
35mm film is on its way out of first run movie theaters, but I don't see film being eliminated completely. Art house theaters, revival houses, colleges, etc. will still have a need for running film prints. What are they going to use to play the audio in the long run, like 10 or 20 years from now? If there's anything I know about digital hardware is it all breaks eventually and the companies making the hardware don't make replacement parts for very long at all. Theaters playing film prints could eventually be stuck playing the audio in analog once critical pieces of equipment fail.
A lot of the digital sound processing hardware that was so common in the 1990s and this past decade is already in the process of dying. I'm sure plenty of first and second generation Dolby and DTS processors have bitten the dust. Same for SDDS hardware. That format is at least comatose and heading for the grave since no new hardware for it has been made in several years.
If some custom, multi-purpose film reader can at least properly see the audio data on the print it might be able to send it to some type of digital audio processor or computer to decode the audio or use the film print data to sync audio from a hard disc drive.
DTS/DataSat has sort of tip-toed in that direction with their XD-10 and XD-20 processors. They not only decode the theatrical DTS format but can also decode home theater DTS and even the home theater variant of Dolby Digital. Why not add more audio formats to the mix?
quote: Sam D. Chavez
CDS was way hard to do as their own reader could not reliably read their track.
I wonder how much of the problem was due to film printing issues as opposed to issues with the reader. CDS audio had a bit rate of around 6 million bits per second. I'm sure there was some considerable challenge in getting the CDS data onto 70mm prints and 35mm prints consistently.
By comparison, on 35mm film Dolby Digital runs at only 1/12 the rate of CDS, around 550 kilobits per second. That includes all the error correction data; the actual DD track is encoded at only 320kb/s. The data is able to be printed at a larger, easier to read size, making it more robust at overcoming inconsistencies in film printing.
But if the real problem with CDS was its film reader we have had 21 years worth of advancements in LEDs and CCD/CMOS imaging chips. New technology could probably do a far better job of reading a CDS audio track if the CDS audio track was reproduced on the film print well enough.
quote: Sam D. Chavez
It had similarities as some of the same individuals designed it but it's a whole different unit, much more sophisticate and unlike CDS, it had some redundancy.
SDDS operates at a much lower bit rate than CDS, about 1.2 million bits per second (Sony Professional ATRAC codec). It has a primary digital track and a complete backup digital track as well as the analog track for final backup. And I have heard SDDS do the double-fail from primary digital to secondary digital to analog plenty of times -most often with very worn AMC Theaters policy snipes.
quote: Sam D. Chavez
One big difference was the bits are located on both sides of the film way outside the standard area reserved for soundtracks. It would be very difficult to adapt the SR.D penthouse reader to pick this off.
The sort of reader I'm hypothesizing would have to be an entirely new design, maybe something where the imaging pick-ups can be shifted to target different positions on the film print.
Obviously, this sort of idea will be rendered moot if movie studios decide to only distribute DCPs exclusively and push the film projectors of specialty theaters into moth balls or the trash heap.
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Paul Gordon
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 580
From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Aug 2005
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posted 03-24-2011 08:35 AM
I agree, DTS discs can be copied easily, uploaded to hard drives, the DTS processors themselves are very basic boxes, that seem to keep on chugging. Just look at all the people still using the DTS6! Dolby Digital blows for older, dirty, splicy prints, it will always drop to analog.
quote: Steve Guttag
As for DTS...there are more of those discs out there being horded than you can imagine...also, it isn't a real trick to recreate them or even port the technology to a discless based one. Likewise...the decoding scheme won't be all that tricky. In fact, I could see a day when digital for film will also be a PCM track running off of a non-special computer with the audio files sent in just like for DCinema. Storage space just isn't all that big a deal anymore...all that would be left is syncing the projector to the player...a DTS type time code would be quite handy...if you don't have a pulse-tach set up already.
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